FBC Morning Light – November 3, 2022

Faith Baptist Church

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Another good Thursday morning to you. Hope your week is going well for you. Well today we're once again in 1

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John, and this time in chapter 2, and it's in the middle of this chapter, verses 15 to 17,

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I want to zero in on today. These couple of verses challenge us with our loves.

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What do we love? Do we love the world and the things that are in the world, or do we love the will of God?

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Which is it? Now the passage challenges us not to love the world or the things that are in the world, and then it kind of gives us a broad category of what those things in the world happen to be.

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He says, all that is in the world, verse 16, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the

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Father, but is of the world. Now those three categories are very general, and there are a lot of things that can fall under the umbrella of the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, but we see, if you go all the way back to the fall in Genesis chapter 3, we see a very good example of each of those categories.

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So when the serpent came to Eve and had her looking at the fruit, and he's trying to manipulate her thinking and distort

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God's Word and so forth, and to get her to eat of the fruit, we read in verse 6 that the woman saw that the tree was good for food.

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There's the lust of the flesh, good for food. It is desirable to some way gratify my physical being, gratify my flesh.

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In this case, it was a very tangible piece of fruit that could be food and could theoretically provide nourishment for the body.

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She looked at it and said, that's desirable for food, it's good for food.

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The reason that this is a problem is that God had said it's off -limits.

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The lust of the flesh then is the desire for something to gratify the flesh that God says is off -limits.

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Then the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, she goes on to say it was pleasant to the eyes.

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It was something that when she looked at it, it evoked a response within her that was a response of affection, a response of appreciation, a response of delight.

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So she's looking at something that's giving her great delight that really instead should evoke not delight, but danger.

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It should speak to her of danger. She should see this thing which on the surface of it may be appealing, may appear desirable, but it represents death.

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It represents something destructive, and there are all kinds of things that fall into this category in the world that we must not love.

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Things that are the lust of the eyes, desirable to look upon, that on the surface of it is very pleasant to see.

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It evokes within us a response of appreciation or delight in some way, but what is it that we're looking at?

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What does it represent? What will it do to me in the end?

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They therefore must be loathed and not loved. The reason that this object of what she is looking at is a problem is because God has set it off limits.

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It's outside of what's legitimate for you to have. Same in 1

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John 2, 16. The lust of the eyes has to do with desiring something that I see through my eye gate that God has said is off limits.

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Then there's the pride of life. This is expressed in Genesis 3, when the woman saw that this was desirable to make her wise.

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It would do something to me to improve my status. I would be wise if I ate this fruit.

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Again, we can think of our modern world and what it has to offer, and the pride of life can be anything that I think is going to elevate me and to give me great stature, but the pursuit of that thing or the acquisition of that thing is outside the framework of God's limitations.

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He has put some boundaries in place, and that's on the other side of the boundary. This is why back in 1

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John 2, he says the world is passing away, and the desires, the lust of it, all those things that we want to, we think would be good for the gratification of the flesh, we look upon with our eyes and we long for them, the things that we think are going to exalt us and give us great stature, those things are all passing away, and they are wrong for us if they're outside the parameters, the boundaries that God has established.

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But he that does the will of the Lord, the will of God, the end of verse 17 says, abides forever.

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If I shun those things that are on the other side of the fence and limit myself, focus my attention, what my flesh, my body needs to that which

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God has provided within the framework of his will, and same with my eyes, and same with the development of my life, if that's all within the framework of God's will, that breeds life, that gives life.

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Let's be careful what we love. Let's not love things that we ought to loathe, things that will be destructive to us, things that are outside the framework of God's will.

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Let's be passionate about the pursuit of the will of God, and staying within the framework of his will.

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Our Father and our God, I pray that our love would be what it ought to be.

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We would not love the world and the things of the world, but we would certainly love you and your will for us.

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We pray this in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen. All right, well have a good rest of your